From Critical Thought to Change: Freire in the Classroom

      In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Palo Freire defines the idea of the Banking Model of education as a divide between a teacher who is the subject of the classroom and the students who are objects in the same room. The students are empty vessels that are filled by the contents of what the teacher / subject knows though narrations that impart static facts to the learner (71). For me, this description of the banking model is the center of the book, as it is the counterpoint which all the suggestions for improvement are posed against, and it is remarkably similar to the status quo as described by Postman & Weingartner. The students are passive receivers, where “[t]he more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are” (72). Education, in the Banking Model, is an endpoint where those who have been educated in the method are automatons made to integrate into the status quo (74).

The environment that Freire was theorizing in was different than those Postman & Weingartner were looking at. Freire was teaching the titular oppressed illiterate poor of Brazil while the other authors were addressing the American school system of the same time. What they had in common though, was a concern with turning educational objects into subjects. What this entails for both texts is having the oppressors become their own liberators, and not purely following some teacher. Both sets of authors focus on the process-orientated aspect of education and larger reality (Freire 75, 83; Postman & Weingartner 205).

Freire’s counterpoint to the dominant Banking Model of Education is a “problem-posing” model of education. In this model, we have a dialogical, two-way, rejection of the narrative education that epitomizes the Banking Model and instead relies on conversation and “cognition, not transferals of education” (79). In this model, the teacher loses subjectivity, and the students lose their objectivity, and all parties grow together. Everyone becomes both student and teacher (80). The problem posing model is more liberatory in that it frees everyone of the constraints of the Banking Model, both the initial students and the teachers. This new method is full of revolutionary potential as the problem-posing model is a mode of praxis. It is a state of constantly becoming and not a filled bucket (84). If I were to try to parse the difference between the problem posing education posited by Freire to the inquiry method of Postman & Weingartner it would be that the inquiry method feels more isolated to the confines of the school and the immediate community. The problem posing model is one that in theory is about the larger political process. Freire means it to be liberatory not just into a coming to knowledge about the self and the world, and through that changing the world - praxis.

To implement the problem posing model of education, we can use the Freirean Culture Circles, grounded in the idea of conscientização, a Portuguese term meaning critical awareness, critical consciousness, or consciousness-raising (104). In culture circles. Freire emphasized that the prior life of students is the starting point in teaching reading and writing. Schooling was necessary not only to learn the letters of the alphabet, but also to know each person, and who they are (Souto-Manning 17). We can implement these in the classroom as individual study circles as we teach our pupils with the problem posing model of education as we move from there to dialogue to action.

Implementing these study circles in a classroom would look something like this. First you have to explain the model. You are moving away from the current dynamic of the Banking Model and instead moving towards a more student-centered process where you students have the ownership over their education an everyone is both a teacher and a learner. You would need to make sure that there is buy-in and understating at this point. It is a new process and not what your co-learners are used to. Everyone needs to be on the same page, knowing that the classroom is a safe space and to be respectful, and my role would be to be impartial facilitator, keeping discussions focused, being open to different viewpoints, and asking tough questions (Organizing).

Once the stage was set, we would then venture forth to trying to figure out what it was that we wanted to explore. We would take what the students knew and were interested in as the basis for further exploration. We could take broad themes and start to focus on something specific. We would then move from the specific to a dialogue with me as the facilitator asking questions and making sure that everyone was part of the process. The end goal of these circles is praxis.

This is the model that I see in this class. We were presented with the syllabi, and there is the reading that we have to do, but through the presentations and the discussions in class, the goal is the coming to consciousness of  “conscientização” as we all learn from each other. The presentation assignments force us to do that, by taking the students out of our comfort zone and making us present, we do have ownership over our education in this course in a way that I have not had before even in seminar classes. I can also see Freire’s influence in the final paper. It is designed so that we can look at a problem at an organization close to us and think about why it is happening and how we can make changes to it. If we do it right, it becomes a change that we can actually make and improve the world around us from where we were at the start of the class to a slightly better world that we make through our praxis.

Finally, I still have a couple of concerns about the implementation process. By removing the authority from yourself as a teacher, you do become a partner. However, you do have the fact that no matter how you present it, there is the chance you will have students who are resistant to the process. The Banking Model hierarchy is so enculturated to people that to move away from the existing paradigm creates resistance. You might not find that all your students are as willing and flexible to move towards praxis in their self-education and they could disrupt the process for the rest of students if you do not have full buy in. The other concern is that in my implementation plan I was talking about is in generalities since I can see how Freire was successful in teaching literacy and how my approaches to writing inspired by his methods worked where a subject less grounded in skills and more focused in facts might not work as well. I struggle to think about how we teach chemistry with the problem-posing model. 

Works Cited

 

Altman, David G. Public Health Advocacy: Creating Community Change to Improve Health. Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention, 1994.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

Henke, Cole. “State to Make Cuts to Care for Developmentally Disabled in Illinois.” WCIA.Com, WCIA.com, 21 Jan. 2024, www.wcia.com/news/state-to-make-cuts-to-care-for-developmentally-disabled/.

Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Penguin Books, 1972.

“Section 11. Organizing Study Circles.” Chapter 31. Conducting Advocacy Research | Section 11. Organizing Study Circles | Main Section | Community Tool Box, ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/advocacy/advocacy-research/study-circles/main. Accessed 10 Mar. 2024.

Souto-Manning, Mariana. Freire, Teaching, and Learning: Culture Circles across Contexts. Peter Lang, 2010.

Wehmeyer, Michael L. “Self-Determination and the Empowerment of People with Disabilities.” KU ScholarWorks, Council for Exceptional Children, Jan. 2004, kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/10942.